Peanut Butter Boy
by Melee
Summary: Short and Sweet. Cye remembers a first meeting. Warning: Contains uncut scenes of Ryo and barely restrained peanut butter. Also, summary is grossly misleading. This is not humorous at all.


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Peanut Butter Boy 

by Melee

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I met Ryo for the first time at a bus stop. It was years before saving the world and the shock of using Suiko, but it took me until a while after that to realize they were the same person. It was actually one of those rare times just after he'd cut his hair so he didn't look nearly as wild-child-from-the-woods as he does sometimes. The day was rainy, and I was taking the bus home.

I was also having a horrible day, in my opinion. I'd been late, leaving my lunch behind when I ran out the door. I was cold and ravenous, and I wanted the bus shelter to be empty and warm when it wasn't either of those things.

There was boy on the bench, dwarfed by a hand-me-down jacket on top of clothes he was clearly meant to grow into. (I doubted at the time that he ever would. Even now Ryo is shorter than everyone but Kento.) All of it was patched and worn, making him appear, to me, to be some sort of _Precious Moments_ garden gnome. When he looked at me with his huge, wide eyes, I immediately thought he was very young. At my school, all the kids had adopted the habit of squinting ill-naturedly whenever we could so that we looked jaded and mature.

Ryo's dad was with him, pacing restlessly in front of the bench, radiating energy with a kind of intensity that I can never manage when I'm not at sea. Ryo is like that sometimes. A lot of the time really, but he is capable also of an unmatched calm, a slow, lethargic sort of contentment like the last coals of a fire in the hearth. In that if nothing else, he is frighteningly similar to that overgrown housecat he calls a tiger.

It was one of the only two times I've ever seen Ryo's dad. Aside from the tan, the two of them don't look much alike. For one, Ryo's dad has brown eyes. Ryo has the kind of eyes that everyone who's ever met him remembers exactly what color they are.

My eyes are blue like Ryo's, but the same way my hair is red. If they were crayon colors, they'd be labeled grey and brown. Ryo's eyes are true crayon blue.

Ryo beamed at me, kicking his feet happily. I felt horribly self conscious and had a miserable time deciding whether he deserved a nasty glare for being friendly while I was in a mood or whether I ought to be nice to a younger kid. I didn't know then that he was so happy because it was the first time in four months that his dad had been home long enough to take him out somewhere other than home.

At that time, I was terrible at meeting new people. The only thing I hated more than new people was how stupid I felt around them because I didn't know how to introduce myself. As you can imagine, I didn't have many friends in junior high, but I had gotten much better by the time I went to high school.

My stomach growled, and I could see Ryo taken aback. He reached into the huge pockets of his oversized jacket, pulling out a flattened peanut butter sandwich which he offered to me gracelessly. I remember watching him and remembering how clumsy some of my little cousins were.

"I'm not hungry," Ryo explained, extending the sandwich towards me. He spoke too loudly, very awkward. His dad turned from studying to route map to peer at us over strange spectacles that looked as if they came from some bygone era. I don't know if they were antiques or just styled that way.

Ryo offered me the sandwich again. "It's peanut butter..."

I was terrified, I'm not really sure why, but I took the sandwich just as my bus came. I remember thinking that I'd better not tell my mum because she would have been furious that I'd taken food from strangers. Ryo waved from the bench while I stared out the bus window, clutching the sandwich. I spent the bus ride eating it, worried that my mother would want to know where it had come from if I didn't finish it before I got home.

It still bothers me that I forgot to say thank you.

For the next few weeks, whenever I had nothing to think about, I was thinking about him, creating an epic back story suitable for endless hours of play. By the end of the month, though he didn't know it, I had in my idle head a peanut butter boy who wore clothes handed down from giants and never left the house with any less than four peanut butter sandwiches hidden in his deep pockets. I pictured him saving me from my sister's friends and finishing my math homework. I have always been the type for imaginary friends.

Ryo doesn't remember any of this. I'm sure he wonders why I would be so certain, or why I would fixate so easily on a strange child with a sandwich. I think he had a lonely childhood, and it's the nature of lonely children not to imagine there are other lonely children. That it's not just you.

I remember the only time I've ever been to Ryo's house, seeing his dad and the accompanying déjà vu. I remember the next day bursting out of the half-asleep daze of Sunday mornings with a cry of "Eureka!" I remember also that Ryo wasn't there for my realization, and I had to wait, looking for some premise to bring it up. I was happy then, laughing, because for some reason Ryo's obliviousness just cemented my certainty.

Of course, it wasn't hard; his dad still wears the same glasses.


End file.
